May We Meet Again
by This-is-my-designx
Summary: When Raven says "come with me," Amara Kane can't quite bring herself to refuse, but life on Earth is not at all how she imagined it. With the Grounders intent on annihilating them, the harsh conditions on earth and an ex-boyfriend who seems determined to act like she doesn't exist, Amara has to wonder if life on the Ark really was all that bad. A mix between the show & book.
1. Chapter 1

The library was almost completely empty, just the way Amara liked it. Finally some peace and quiet.

She slowly turned the pages of the book sat in front of her – _Da Vita Caesarum – _skimming over the pages for what seemed like the hundredth time that week alone. She had been having trouble with being really able to get into anything for a few weeks now. When that happened – which it often did – she tended to go back to books she'd read a hundred times before, to try and help her get back into the swing of things.

Of course, reading might not have turned into such a hardship if she were allowed to actually take books out of the library once in a while and read them in the comfort of her own home. But rules were rules, and she'd already broken enough of them to get her floated. If she got caught, that was.

She glanced at her watch. Thirteen-hundred hours. She returned _Da Vita Caesarum _to its oxygen-free glass casing, promising to return the following day to finish reading about how Caligula had married his sister, threatened to make his horse consul and sacrificed a flamingo.

Amara left the library, wincing as the bright lights shone over her; a stark contrast to the peaceful shadows that the library had to offer. She walked briskly, her eyes slowly relaxing as they became accustomed to the somewhat harsh lighting. She was due to meet Raven in the mess hall for lunch, a meeting she was late for. Raven wouldn't mind. Amara seemed to be late for everything, some way or another.

Amara passed a huddle of Walden teenagers. They turned to stare at her with an almost accusatory stare, which took her aback a little. Whilst she was used to hostility directed towards her because of who she was, especially from those on Walden and Arcadia, there was something about the ferocity of their glares that had Amara wondering what her father had done now.

Every crime committed on the Ark was punishable by death, unless the perpetrator was under the age of eighteen, in which case they would be imprisoned until their 18th birthday upon which they would be reviewed and either pardoned or floated. It had been a very long time since someone was pardoned.

Councilman Marcus Kane, Chancellor Jaha's right hand man, upheld the law with needle-sharp precision. To say that he went by the book word for word was an understatement. He was cruel, cold and calculating. He was also her father. He had no shortage of enemies on the Ark, and she had inherited those enemies just by being born. She was guilty by association.

She had almost reached the mess hall when she realised how quiet it was. Too quiet, almost as if someone had pressed mute. It was lunch time, so the mess hall should have been teeming with life. She turned the corner with a frown and a growing sense of anticipation to find the cause of the eerie silence plain as day. The entire hall was being held at gun-point.

No. No, not the entire hall. Just one person. Chancellor Jaha.

Unable to move in fear of alerting the gunman of her presence, she stared in silence as the man wearing the guard's uniform – although she doubted very much that he was a guard at all – pointed his gun at the Chancellor's head. Everybody else seemed to be frozen.

If they saw her emerge from around the corner then they didn't let on, for which Amara was grateful. So much as a glance in her direction would mean her certain death, she was sure. Under the fake-guardsman's arm, Amara could see Raven at the far side of the hall, staring at scene in horror. She looked back at Jaha. He was holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Perhaps he was going to try and appeal to the shooter's better nature. What good that would do, though, Amara didn't know. By now he would know that whether he took the shot or not, he was sure to be floated either way. Might as well go through with it, right?

Apparently she and the gunman were on the same page, because a split second later Amara watched as he pulled back the trigger and an ear-splitting blast shot through the room and suddenly all chaos ensued.

Jaha was doubled over, his hands clasped to his abdomen. Blood was starting to seep through the gaps between his fingers. Dozens of people rushed forwards to his aid, whilst others looked in the direction of her and the shooter. A few of the actual guards started forwards and he held up the gun in a very obvious gesture: _come any closer and I'll shoot you too. _They stopped, the weapons in their hands useless against a gun, and he turned to flee.

Despite the horror that had just unfolded before her very eyes, that was nothing compared to the shock of the shooter turning and revealing his identity. Amara staggered back a couple of steps, her mouth agape. He stared back at her for a short moment, his expression unreadable.

_Bellamy. _


	2. Chapter 2

The atmosphere at home that night was tense.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the Ark had gone into lockdown. Everyone bar the guardsmen and the council had been ordered back to their quarters, allowed to leave only when the shooter had been taken into custody and the lockdown lifted.

Amara had gone over the scene time and time again in her mind. Despite it having only lasted a second, two at the most, she couldn't stop herself from coming up with ways that she could have perhaps prevented the attack. She could have attempted to get the gun away from him, at least.

She'd tried to follow him. What for, she wasn't exactly sure. To tell him he was an idiot, perhaps? To pull him back and make him answer for his crime? Not likely. To help him hide? Maybe. All he could do now was hide, but for how long? Hiding places on the Ark were scarce, and every guardsman would be scouring every station, top to bottom, to find Bellamy and bring him to her father, who would be acting Chancellor what with Jaha being incapacitated and all.

"What were you _thinking?" _The words burst out of her mouth unbidden as she stared at the empty room, almost as though she expected some sort of answer to pop up from behind the dining table. She sat down on the edge of one of the hard-backed chairs and put her head in her hands. She knew Bellamy, or at least, she had done at one point. Whilst she could maybe understand his motivations for shooting Jaha, he would have had to have known that the moment he pulled out that gun, his death was imminent. An unavoidable consequence. People had been executed for a lot less. Bellamy had committed his whole life to protecting his sister. Amara couldn't imagine that he'd give up his own life to take away the Chancellor's, and leave his sister alone on the Ark with no one to protect her.

It just… didn't seem like something Bellamy would do.

Her father came storming in later than usual. Ordinarily she would have gone to bed hours ago if only to avoid the perpetual bad mood that was Marcus Kane, but she couldn't go to bed without knowing whether or not Bellamy had been caught and his execution set. She couldn't possibly even try to sleep without knowing.

"You find them?" Amara asked as soon as the door swung shut behind him. She'd feigned ignorance on the shooter's identity in the hopes of buying Bellamy a little more time to stow himself away on some far, desolate corner of the Ark.

"No," he said after a pause. He shrugged his jacket off and threw it over the edge of the dining table.

"Do you know who it was, at least?" She was trying her best to sound casual, as though she couldn't care less. If he saw through it, he didn't let on.

There was an even longer pause this time, which told her very clearly that, yes, they had at least a good idea. "Bellamy Blake," Marcus said slowly, watching his daughter closely.

"Bellamy?" Amara repeated, trying to sound as if this news surprised her. "Are you sure?"

"Fairly."

Amara nodded. She could tell by the look on his face that he'd been expecting more of a reaction, but what could she do? She could feign disbelief and insist that Bellamy would never, _ever _do such a thing, but little good it would do. Plenty of people had been in that hall and had seen Bellamy Blake pull out that gun. She wanted to ask what they'd do when they caught him, but is wasn't a question worth asking, not when she knew the procedure down to a T. At twenty-three years old, Bellamy would be spared the skybox and sent straight to the airlock chamber. The thought made her chest tighten uncomfortably.

"I'm sorry," Marcus said as he lowered himself down onto a chair at the opposite side of the table. He looked exhausted.

"No, you're not," Amara fought the urge to laugh bitterly. "You've been looking for an excuse to float him ever since they found his sister." If it had been up to Marcus, Bellamy would have floated along with his mother. He'd known about his sister, and helped keep the secret, harbouring an illegal child for sixteen years. Maybe not in the eyes of some of the other council members, but certainly in the eyes of her father, Bellamy was just as guilty as his mother had been. "Well, now you have it. Well done."

"Amara!" Marcus tried, albeit somewhat half-heartedly, to call her back as she rose from her chair and made her way without as much as a backwards glance in her father's direction. He wouldn't follow her, she knew. He never did.

The idea that life would soon be without Bellamy Blake was an idea that Amara was wildly against. Though she hadn't spoken to him in a year, barely even laid eyes on him, she had been somewhat content in the knowledge that he was out there somewhere on the Ark, alive. Now she wouldn't even have that.

Who would cry for him, she wondered. Who would mourn him? His mother was long gone. His sister locked up, probably blissfully unaware of the crime her brother had committed, and therefore unaware of the fate that awaited him once he was found. He had friends, though they were few and far between.

She would mourn him. It was less than he deserved, but it was all she had to offer. She couldn't help him this time. No amount of persuasion on her part would sway her father's decision.

The worst part was, was that she knew that her father didn't _have_ any other choice. Bellamy had shot the Chancellor – with the intention to kill, she was sure – in a very public setting. She had known people who had been floated for petty theft, never mind attempted murder.

That didn't mean she would hate him any less.


	3. Chapter 3

Artemis Kane sat at the solitary table that took up a large part of the living area in her flat, hands clasped atop the surface. Her grey eyes (like storm clouds, Marcus had once described them, despite none of them having ever seen storm clouds, other than in pictures) followed her daughter around the room as she paced around the slightly cramped living space. To say that she had downgraded somewhat since her marriage contract with Marcus had been terminated was an understatement to say the least. Her living quarters on Arcadia were not even half as big as the flat that she had shared with her husband – ex-husband – and daughter up on Phoenix. Of course, she lived alone so naturally larger flats would be allocated to people who needed the space, but it had taken some getting used to all the same.

Amara hadn't said a word since arriving. She'd given her mother a look that quite plainly said "don't ask" before pushing past her into the flat, and beginning to pace up and down the small patch of free space between the table and the door. It had been three quarters of an hour.

Despite not having seen her daughter for two, maybe three weeks (Amara's work in the chemistry labs took up a lot of her time) Artemis didn't have to ask what was wrong to have an idea as to what was causing her daughter's turmoil. The news that Bellamy Blake had shot the Chancellor had spread like wildfire. Patrols on the Ark had increased tenfold on all stations in their desperate bid to find him. Whilst security hadn't exactly been lax before, the guardsmen had tightened it almost to a chokehold, but it looked like Bellamy had slipped through the cracks. Lockdown had lasted all of two days, within which she was sure the guardsmen and the council were certain they would have caught him. When it became clear that catching Bellamy Blake was going to take longer – maybe much, much longer – the lockdown had been lifted, since life on the Ark could only go on for so long with everybody holed up in their living quarters.

With a heavy sigh of frustration, Amara threw herself into the chair opposite Artemis. Her hands were clasped together, mirroring her mother's position. Whilst Artemis's eyes were fixed on Amara, Amara was glaring down at her hands as though they had committed some deeply offensive infraction.

Artemis pushed a cup full of tea towards Amara. "How's your father?" She asked, sensing that beating about the bush was the wiser of her options given the circumstances. Bellamy Blake was a touchy subject, something that she very much doubted had changed with his shooting the Chancellor. Amara would talk about it when she was ready.

"Dad's…" she made a vague, dismissive hand gesture. "Y'know, dad." She paused for a moment. She looked like she was struggling with whether or not to say something. "He misses you." Ah.

"Did he tell you that?" Artemis asked lightly. She knew that Amara's reason for bringing up the ruined remnants of her relationship with Marcus was more about avoiding the glaringly obvious. Ignoring that which she was not yet ready to talk about.

"No, but I can tell! I'm sure if you just talked to him he—"

"No," Artemis cut her off firmly. "You know I can't do that. He wants the truth and I can't give him that."

"Well I can! I'll tell him everything. I should never have let you take the fall for me in the first place."

"Amara."

"Mom, you don't deserve to pay for my mistakes. You shouldn't have to suffer because of what I did."

"Sweetheart," Artemis took both of Amara's hands in her own. "I would do it all again a hundred times over if it meant protecting you."

"But I—"

"No, we're not talking about this anymore, Amara. What's done is done."

Amara didn't look like she was happy with the way their conversation had gone, a conversation that they had had many times before today. Had there been a way to let them both walk away from the mess that Amara had created, blame-free, Artemis would have jumped on it, but someone had to take the blame, and there was no way in hell, not now, not ever, that Artemis was letting her daughter take the fall. A ruined marriage and a tiny flat was a small price to pay for her daughter's life.

"I hear he's acting Chancellor, your father." Artemis offered, hoping to steer Amara away from the subject of the Incident.

"Yep," Amara took the cup that Artemis had pushed towards her, picked it up and stared at the contents for a moment before setting it back down.

"How's that treating him?"

Amara shrugged. "No idea. I've barely seen him since…" she trailed off and looked up at her mother helplessly.

"Since Bellamy shot Jaha?" Artemis ventured softly. When Amara nodded slowly, Artemis reached out and took one of Amara's hands in hers. "You don't have to talk about it, not unless you want to."

"What is there to talk about?" Amara attempted a smile. "He shot the Chancellor. When they catch him, they'll float him. End of."

"Well, you must have something to say about it," she gave her daughter a small smile. "You spent forty-five minutes pacing around the room."

Amara blinked. Once, twice, three times before she opened her mouth to speak. "I'm scared, mom," she said, her voice breaking.

"Of Bellamy?"

"_For _Bellamy. I know that what he did was absolutely awful, I do, but…" she broke off with a shrug, "I just don't want him to die."

Before Artemis could reply, three short, sharp knocks resounded throughout the small space, effectively ending their conversation. With a small sigh of exasperation, Artemis edged around the table and took the few small steps towards the front door. She pulled it open to find former Chancellor Diana Sydney stood on the other side. She opened her mouth to say something but Artemis held up a hand to silence her. Whilst she was confident that Diana wouldn't say anything incriminating out in the open like that, she didn't want to risk it anyway. If Amara heard anything she shouldn't, it could very easily get back to Marcus. She gestured slightly with her head to indicate that she wasn't alone and Diana glanced past her, into the flat, to see Amara sat at the table, looking into the depths of the cup of tea she had neglected to drink. Almost as though she sensed that they were looking at her, Amara turned and widened her eyes in surprise.

"Amara," said Diana, her tone harbouring a warmth that Artemis had never heard before. "I'm sorry to be a nuisance, but I need to borrow your mother for a while. I trust that's alright with you?"

"Uh, sure," replied Amara, looking between the two women with an expression of profound confusion. "I have to go meet Raven anyway, so…" she trailed off. She rose from the table and made her way towards the door, pausing only to lay a hand on her mother's arm for a moment in way of farewell, and to give Diana a polite smile. Both women watched as Amara made her way down the hallway. The moment she was out of sight, Diana pushed past Artemis into her flat and waited until the door had been closed (and bolted) behind the pair of them.

"What's wrong?"

"Jaha's alive," Diana spat.

"How? I thought the boy shot him?"

"Oh, he did. Turns out he's a god-awful shot."

"What do we do now?"

Diana was silent for a long moment. She surveyed Artemis carefully, the corners of her mouth hinting at a smile. "How do you feel about explosives?"


	4. Chapter 4

Amara was still puzzling over what Diana Sydney could have possibly wanted with her mother when she arrived at the lab. Of course her mother and Diana had been on speaking terms back when her parents were still together, but it was in more of a polite, forced conversation way, than actual friends.

She shook her head, bemused, as she punched in the code on the small keypad next to the clear glass door. _19-45, _the year that atomic bombs were first used in warfare.

The keypad beeped to let her know that the combination was correct and a small light beneath the door handle glowed green. She pulled the door open (a move that required some force. Why did it have to be so _heavy?_) and passed through the doorway into her laboratory.

Ok, it wasn't technically _hers, _but still, she was the one who spent the most time there, so it kind of was.

The door swung shut behind her and she heard the _click _of the lock. Other than herself, the room was empty. Not that she didn't enjoy the company of her fellow scientists, she preferred it that way. It gave her the mind-set she needed to concentrate. It was hard to focus on one thing for long when Mindy was in the corner "muttering" to herself about thermal decomposition ("Hey, Mindy? Could you maybe, like, keep it down a bit over there?" "Ok, you know what? I am muttering over here. Is it my fault if you've got weird, hyper-sensitive hearing?"). Or Daniel frantically scribbling down a formula for a new compound as he talked himself through it out loud.

She was good at science, and once she'd discovered that she was good at it, she'd grown to love it. She was lucky in the respect that she'd been born to parents on Phoenix, meaning she had the freedom to choose her own career, to follow her passion, as opposed to just following in the footsteps of whatever job your parents had, and their parents before them, and their parents and so on, like you had to on Walden and Arcadia.

She loved her job, but it also worked as a good cover for her extracurricular activities. Her other job was… dangerous, to say the least. She had to be incredibly careful, especially when you considered who her father was. She was playing with fire, had been for years. She'd been burned once, she didn't intend to let it happen again.

Amara shrugged on her lab coat and pulled her hair back into a ponytail, then she sighed. Her father wanted her to carry out a number of experiments to determine (or at least estimate) if the earth was still soaked in radiation, and if it was, how much? Would the human body be capable of withstanding it?

She had protested, but her father had insisted. "_This is important, Amara. More so than you could even begin to imagine." _

Even if her head hadn't been all over the place what with the whole Bellamy thing, she wouldn't have known where to begin. Her father was putting too much stock into her abilities. How was she supposed to carry out an experiment to determine how much radiation the human body could survive, without experimenting on an actual human body?

She couldn't do that. She was no stranger to illegal activities, but she drew the line at exposing someone to radiation in the name of science.

A knock on the door startled the frown off of her face. She looked up. Raven was stood on the other side. She gave a little wave when Amara caught her eye and gestured towards to door handle.

If you didn't have the code, the door could only be opened from the inside. Since Raven was not a scientist, the code was officially off-limits to her. She knew the code, Amara had entrusted it to her in the utmost confidence. "_Only for emergencies," _she'd said in her sternest voice. Whilst she trusted Raven not to come and go as she pleased, it was better for Raven to at least pretend like she didn't know it, just in case anyone was watching.

Amara pulled open the door and stepped aside to let Raven pass.

"Hey," said Raven as the door shut behind them. "What's up?" she asked upon catching sight of Amara's expression.

For a split second Amara considered telling her everything. She considered telling her about the Incident, about why her parents really ended their marriage contract and went their separate ways. She considered telling her about the seemingly impossible task her father had set her. She opened her mouth, ready for it all to come pouring out, but stopped herself at the last second. The less Raven knew, the better. They were her burdens to carry, she couldn't expect Raven to share the load.

"Nothing," she forced a smile, hoping her pause hadn't given away the game. Lying came relatively easy to Amara, but Raven knew her well enough to see through them. "Everything's fine."

Raven didn't look like she believed her, but, to Amara's relief, she didn't push it. It seemed she had other subjects she wanted to pursue.

"Do you know?"

She wondered if they'd caught Bellamy and she'd somehow missed it. "Know what?" she said in what she hoped was a nonchalant way.

"About the Exodus ship?"

"What Exodus ship?"

"The one they "ejected"."

"I-what?"

"During maintenance," said Raven, raising her eyebrows. Amara had the distinct feeling that she was digging for something. "A "routine maintenance accident", they had to eject the ship. Funny, though. There was no damage. You'd think there'd be damage, wouldn't you?"

"Yes you would." Amara frowned, thoroughly confused. "Raven, where are you going with this?"

"You really don't know, do you?"

"Know _what?_"

Raven put her hands on her hips and surveyed Amara critically. "I thought you would know. You of all people."

"Know _what_, Raven?" Raven just looked at her. Amara let out a sigh of frustration. "If, in a few years or so, you feel like explaining what the hell you're talking about, let me know." She turned away from her friend and took a step towards the drawer that held all the research they currently had on radiation.

"The Ark is dying." Raven said, so quietly that Amara wondered (and hoped) that she had misheard her.

"What?"

"The Ark is dying," she repeated, louder this time. There was no mistaking her words. "Life support is failing."

Amara stared at Raven, aghast. She was lying. She had to be lying, because there was no way that the council could keep something like this from the people. Amara bit back a bitter laugh, because even as she was thinking the words, she knew full well that the council would most definitely keep something like that from the people.

"The council sent a hundred delinquents – kids – down to the ground to find out if earth is survivable."

"You can't be serious," said Amara eventually after regaining the use of her voice. "Why would the council even bother to send them? We know the earth needs another 100 years." It was a fact that had been drilled into them in what seemed like every history lesson, every science lesson, earth skills, even English and Earth Literature.

"_The earth is simmering in radiation_. _The atmosphere needs at least another hundred years to stabilise,"_ Amara had heard her father say more times than she could even begin to remember. "_It's our job to keep the human race alive until the ground is ready for us to return."_

Raven shrugged. "They're desperate, and the hundred are expendable," she gave Amara a very forced, bitter smile. "Besides, more air for the rest of us, right?"

"How do you even know this?" Raven balked. Amara sighed. "Never mind. It's probably best I don't know, anyway." She shrugged her lab coat off and hung it back on its hook, all of her work for the day forgotten. Her work could wait, this couldn't.

"Where are you going?" Raven asked her, grabbing her by the arm as she made to sweep past.

"I need to talk to my father."

* * *

It made sense, although she didn't want to believe it, pieces were starting to fit together. Her father asking her to carry out experiments via whatever means necessary was only the most recent incident on a list of seemingly stand-alone incidents that were now starting to make sense.

_Wells. _She came to an abrupt halt. Of _course. _When the news had gotten around the Wells Jaha had been arrested – the Chancellors son, no less – disbelief had ranged far and wide. _Wells? _Amara had heard people exclaim incredulously. _But he was always such a good boy. _He'd known. He'd known about the council's plan to send the delinquents to the ground and the idiot had gotten himself arrested. To protect Clarke Griffin, she was willing to bet. The two of them had been inseparable once upon a time, but had gone through a bitter falling out when her father was floated. People don't often feel like upholding anything that resembled a friendship when your parents are responsible for the death of their loved ones, Amara could attest to that only too well.

Amara didn't bother going back to the flat to look for her father. It was still early afternoon, he wouldn't be there. She checked the mess hall, but lunch was over by the time she arrived. The only people still there were those whose job it was to clean up after everybody else. She was making her way to the council chamber when she spotted him at the far end of a corridor, muttering tersely to a guardsman that Amara knew only by sight. She approached them apprehensively. She hadn't actually thought about what she was going to say, having been consumed by her thoughts of the puzzle pieces of strange happenings finally joining together. Thoughts of Wells, her mother and Diana Sydney who were definitely up to something, of Raven – how had she found out about the delinquents being sent to the ground? Of the hundred… were they dead already? Amara had, not friends exactly, but acquaintances, people that she cared about, that had been locked up. She wondered how many of them, if any, had made it to the ground.

When he spotted her, Marcus broke off his conversation with the guardsman with an air of someone who was trying to make an action look casual and strode forward to meet her.

"I thought you were in the lab," he frowned.

"Is it true?"

"Excuse me?"

"Did you send a hundred prisoners to the ground?"

Marcus made a furious _sshh_ing gesture. "Keep your voice down!" He took a hold of her left arm and pulled her to the side, away from the people meandering up and down the corridor. "Where did you hear that?"

"So it is true."

"We're not talking about this, Amara. Not now, not here."

"You sent a hundred of our people down to the ground to die and you just want to sweep it under the rug like it never happened?" She wasn't sure why she was entirely surprised. How many people had her father floated? Hundreds, she bet.

"We didn't send them to die, w—"

"Really?" Amara cut him off heatedly. "Because the last time I checked, the earth was unsurvivable. Soaked in radiation, you said. You said it needed a hundred more years for it to become habitable. You sent our people – kids – down into that."

"Criminals," Marcus corrected her, as if that made all the difference.

"Oh, is that how you're killing people now?"

"I'm trying to save us, Amara," Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, I'll explain everything, but not here. Later, at home."

"Fine," she wasn't going to fight him on this, not when he was offering to tell her what she wanted to know. She turned to walk away and he caught her by the arm again.

"Not a word of this to anyone, understood?"

"Yes, sir."


End file.
